Isn't the default setting on Eclipse something like 512mb of RAM? I've heard if it's too "sluggish", up the RAM usage and watch it fly. (I don't use eclipse, or rather, haven't for years except to write some perl stuff awhile back for the heck of it)

Hi All, thanks for the replies. I tried to install the SublimeCodeIntel plugin for Sublime Text 2 but it didn't really work, or at least wasn't obvious enough to me how to make it work. I need this to work for PHP, specifically.

One of my main problems with Eclipse is that I'm on a Retina Macbook Pro and it doesn't know how to properly scale text in the editor windows when I'm hooked up to an external non-retina screen. Eclipse will randomly render text at twice the normal scale factor on the non-retina Screen, making 12 point text look like 24 point text.

Java on Mac is generally poor, Eclipse just doesn't seem to work correctly in other ways as well. If anyone has any advice or links to clear instructions on how to get SublimeCodeIntel working, that would be the biggest help.

Your problem is Eclipse, not Java. For reals. Eclipse is bad news bears.

Give IntelliJ (or PhpStorm, I guess, given the current drain bramage) a spin. I have a rMBP and just plugged in my (now basically unused, sadly) external monitors and the font rendering looked fine to me.

Your problem is Eclipse, not Java. For reals. Eclipse is bad news bears.

Give IntelliJ (or PhpStorm, I guess, given the current drain bramage) a spin. I have a rMBP and just plugged in my (now basically unused, sadly) external monitors and the font rendering looked fine to me.

I would suggest using a non-intelligent text editor for PHP. Code completion for PHP cannot be great- I'd rather use a lightweight editor with dumb completion (i.e. ctags completion).

Eclipse is good if you do Java- the refactoring tools are worth it. For other languages, it's not so good. I do use it for writing Python, but that's because I'm lazy and used to the shortcuts.

A guy at my previous gig used Eclipse for PHP (well, Aptana), but it didn't look like it was worth it.

It's hard to say. I'm only two weeks in to my current project and it's kind of a clusterfuck in some ways. I think if I had only a text editor, it might take longer to catch my breath in the thin atmosphere created by the astronaut contractors. Really I don't have a lot of faith in contractors, I think their motivation is not the good of the project, it's how can they write code that keeps them getting more hours. Or maybe they're just batshit insane in this case.

Pretty much everything that PHPStorm does out of the box, Netbeans also does out of the box (codesniffer support is a plugin, IIRC). Netbeans is also free. I've had memory issues in incredibly large projects (Think Zend Framework with multiple other instances of the Zend Framework stored inside folders in the project -- yeah, that was a terrible design decision I wasn't privy to), but otherwise it's easy and fast and free and works incredibly well with PHP.

Unless you like good code completion. Before jumping on the IntelliJ train, I went back to Netbeans and found it PDT-esque in its badness. (Also I think, though have not tried, it'll suffer the same problems as Eclipse with regards to rMBPs.)

"It's free" isn't a great selling point either, IMO - PHPStorm is a hundred bucks. Even the full IntelliJ package is all of $499. And it means better overall support if you have a problem; the JetBrains guys are fantastic guys and very responsive to questions/issues.

Unless you like good code completion. Before jumping on the IntelliJ train, I went back to Netbeans and found it PDT-esque in its badness. (Also I think, though have not tried, it'll suffer the same problems as Eclipse with regards to rMBPs.)

"It's free" isn't a great selling point either, IMO - PHPStorm is a hundred bucks. Even the full IntelliJ package is all of $499. And it means better overall support if you have a problem; the JetBrains guys are fantastic guys and very responsive to questions/issues.

I never had a problem with NB's PHP code completion, though I'll admit that I've not tried PHPStorm, so maybe it would blow me away or something (I don't want to write PHP these days at all, so that's probably not going to happen). You may be right about the rMBP problems, though.

And "It's free" was selling point at every company I've ever worked for, since there are plenty of employees who are willing to work with free tools, you can get a lot of pushback on trying to spend 500 bucks to get a development environment installed. And yes, I know that's an indictment of every company I've ever worked for.

And "It's free" was selling point at every company I've ever worked for, since there are plenty of employees who are willing to work with free tools, you can get a lot of pushback on trying to spend 500 bucks to get a development environment installed. And yes, I know that's an indictment of every company I've ever worked for.

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Also, somehow I don't feel good paying for my tools. Part of it might come from above- I'd rather not get used to Idea and then have to give it up because my next employer won't pay for it, but I believe there's a merit to tooling having the least adoption friction as possible- and having to pay for the tool is friction, albeit small.

Also, somehow I don't feel good paying for my tools. Part of it might come from above- I'd rather not get used to Idea and then have to give it up because my next employer won't pay for it, but I believe there's a merit to tooling having the least adoption friction as possible- and having to pay for the tool is friction, albeit small.

A good tool is worth its weight in cold hard cash. Even something as seemingly trivial as a file manager, if done really well, will make a noticeable difference in your productivity and work satisfaction. An IDE much more so. Now, I have no intention of sidetracking this thread, but it's not infrequent when I edit piddly XML files in Eclipse, not longer than a few tens of kilobytes each, for Eclipse to take 1 - 1.5 seconds in switching between each of those files. Click - 1s. Click back - 1s. Open new file - 1s. It's annoying, and irritating, and I'd pay $50 just to be rid of this one tiny issue. Practically speaking I just use a text editor instead, wherever I can, but you get the idea.

I certainly think that anyone programming should aspire to work in an environment where several hundred dollars, to purchase a tool specifically to improve your productivity only a minute or so a day, is viewed as an absolute no brainer.

I used Komodo back in my Perl days and it was awesome. The Regex tool is nigh priceless. JetBrains does very little wrong, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy my own license for any of their apps if my company didn't provide one. IDEA is that good a Java dev platform (and I have, in fact, personally bought an IDEA license when I wasn't provided one in the past). Currently I'm using AppCode, which I will also pay for myself. I can only imagine their other tools will be of similar quality.

For posterity if anyone ever comes to this thread looking for something similar: the answer is Jetbrains, and specifically PhpStorm. It's really great. I have a feeling that all of their other tools are amazing too.

Noticed on the testimonial page for the Jetbrains company that they have testimonials for IDEA from both Bob Martin and Martin Fowler-- that pretty much seals the deal for me when looking for other language IDEs.